My commander cube is complete:
I put together a unique set of rules to optimise the drafting experience, they may seem wonky, but it should work. I highly recommend this format to anyone with a love for the edh multi-player format.
1: I have set this cube up for a 4 player draft experience, but I easily have enough cards for 5 or 6 players, with one exception. Before a single card is drafted I hand out 6 cards to each player which I consider to be "EDH staples. This is, of course optional.
Demonic Tutor
Caged Sun
Sol Ring
Howling Mine
Lightning Greaves
and
Gilded Lotus
I do recommend the Lotus, and the Sol Ring, but the other four are just cards I really like. Getting a play-set+ of these cards can be tricky, but since I love all these cards anyways, It was not an issue for me.
2: After I have handed out the 6 "essentials" we draft commanders. I have 80 non-mono-colored commanders in my cube. I shuffle them, and deal 10 to each player, and then we draft them as normal.
At this point each player has 10 commanders to choose from, which gives them versatility, in the draft (at least early on) and ensures that every player has at-least 1 commander they like. My commander list is varied. I have EDH staples, to old legends cards like a complete set of Elder Dragon Legends, to which the format is named. Some commanders are just absurd like
Phelddagrif
In case my friends are looking for "Hippo Beat-Down" bragging rights.
3: I have a 15 or so card "guild pack for every 2 color combination, plus 1 large one for tri-color commanders. They contain dual lands, and multi colored spells that I think would be useful to someone building an edh deck in that "guild."
After commanders are drafted, I lay them all out in stacks, and we take turns picking one. This helps ensure that every player gets the proper amount of mana-fixers for their aspiring colors, and prevents us from having to draft a ton of dual lands. The large 3 color "guild pack" just has tons of mana fixers, and 3+ color spells, and creatures. No player actually picks it, but we all can take cards from it at the end of the draft if we feel our deck needs something still. There are duplicates of most of the mediocre dual-lands, in case you are in some colors you didn't get a guild pack for.
4: After guild packs are handed out, every player has a pretty good idea of their colors, and strategy, and they have 21 cards, mostly mana-fixers to help them on their way. We typically draft 80 cards next, so thats 320 cards. I have 80 or so great edh cards for each color. I make 16 packs of 20 cards, with 4 (random) cards of each color in each pack. This assures no color is under-represented, and since my cube is much bigger than the amount of cards we draft, each draft is unique.
5: Lastly we draft a small pack of artifacts, and lands. I have 40 artifacts, and 20 non-basic lands. These are not mana-fixer lands, they are legendary lands mostly, with wonky effects, power lands like
Maze of Ith
and artifacts that are fun in a multi player environment like
Helvault
I make 4 packs with 5 artifacts, and 1 land in each, and we draft them last.
I know drafting 96 cards seems like an absurd waste of time, but I assure you it goes faster in this format, as every-one creates a definitive strategy from the beginning. After we build our decks, the entire draft/creation should take about 90-120 minutes. Then we play 4 player games with our decks for a couple hours, dismantle the decks, and call it a night.
Obviosly this cube still works without 99 card decks, but I wouldn't draft to less than 60 card decks because the mana curve in a multi player format is pretty high. I also recommend draftin alot more cards in relation to the size of the intended decks, because of mana restrictions in EDH. The commanders could easily be removed from the equation, and then it's just a multi-player centered cube.
I must say, building this cube was difficult, time consuming, and expensive. There's about 600$ in card in it. It wasn't easy, but it was fun, and rewarding in it's own way.